"Yes ... yes...." she soothed. "Be quiet.... Everything will soon be right."
He turned away from her with a weary sigh. She went to the window. So it had come ... at last ... peace! Below her, in the streets, a great composite, black creature danced and sang and wept and rioted. It beat the air with sticks, and flung its thousand arms up in gestures of abandon, and called upon its new god with passionate supplications. It was a monster at once terrifying, sublime, ridiculous! Claire shuddered. And as she stood there she had a sense of doubt and faith and tenderness and brutality, such as comes only in swift moments of revelation. She knew now that life could be as horrible and as beautiful as it dared. The monster below was a genial monster for the moment, but who could predict what might come if suddenly—Instinctively she covered her eyes with a tremulous hand.... Below her the monster danced and sang and laughed for hours and hours, and for hours and hours she stood spellbound watching its turbulent antics.
Gradually a light began to quicken the east ... the morning star flickered and died ... the clouds grew wrathful. Was it Danilo who called?
She went over to the bed. His eyes were open and shining. He knew her now.
"Lift me ... up," he faltered. "Lift me up...."
She drew his wasted form upward. A smile was on his lips.... Below, the monster still bellowed.
"Did you know, dearest, that it had come?" she questioned. "It is finished.... Peace has come!"
She went over and pushed back the curtain so he might glimpse the morning. How red, how very red the sky had grown!
"Yes," she said again. "Peace has come. Now we can go back ... to your people ... and bind up wounds.... Life has begun for us...."
He put out his arms. She went to him.